There is presently an increasing trend towards the use of smart cards for personal services. Smart cards are convenient and portable for automatically obtaining services from a variety of different vendors. The increased demand may result in the accumulation of a large number of smart cards that are issued by different service providers for their corresponding services. The accumulation of smart cards for each user may present a significant inconvenience to the users of smart cards. Implementing smart cards with multiple functions can be faced with obstacles that include the limited memory on-board smart cards, variations in the physical memory of different card types, requirements for high transfer rates that may be hindered by increased complexity due to the implementation of multiple functions, and quickly increasing requirements for interoperability as applications providers are added to the multi-functional environment. Other limitations may also be faced.
Known techniques in this field apply rigid fixed formatting techniques in which each application of the same type must accommodate data fields needed for the other applications of the same type. Such techniques tend to occupy a substantial portion of the memory on a smart card and can be deficient in allowing for limited expansion or reconfiguration of existing applications.
As such, there is a need for improved techniques for user media and related applications that provide interoperability in multi-functional environments.